BEIT SIRA, West Bank — Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.

“They took our land to build this road, and now we can’t even use it,” Mr. Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. “Israel says it is because of security. But it’s politics.”

The object of Mr. Abu Safia’s contempt — Highway 443, a major access road to Jerusalem — has taken on special significance in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the Supreme Court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank — a charge that makes many Israelis recoil.

Built largely on private Palestinian land, the road was first challenged in the Supreme Court in the early 1980s when the justices, in a landmark ruling, permitted it to be built because the army said its primary function was to serve the local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In recent years, in the wake of stone-throwing and several drive-by shootings, Israel has blocked Palestinians’ access to the road.

This month, as some 40,000 Israeli cars — and almost no Palestinians — use it daily, the court handed down its decision, one that has engendered much legal and political hand-wringing.

From the website: "Equality Forum is a national nonprofit and 501(c)(3) GLBT organization headquartered in Philadelphia. Equality Forum undertakes high impact initiatives, produces documentary films, highlights GLBT history and presents annually the largest national and international GLBT civil rights forum."

AM New York

Lawsuit blames NYC for failure to hire women as bridge painters
March 12, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) _ No women have been allowed to join a squad of 100 city bridge painters, the federal government said in a civil rights lawsuit filed Monday.

The city's Department of Transportation has never hired or offered to hire a woman to paint its 770 elevated bridge structures, although several have applied, the government said in a lawsuit brought in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

A city lawyer, Georgia Pestana, responded: "We are confident the court will determine that DOT's hiring practices for bridge painters comply with civil service requirements and are gender neutral."

But the government said the civil service requirements have not been met, in part because the city has not administered a civil service examination for bridge painters since 1992.

The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is a collection of documents and information about civil rights cases in selected case categories across the United States. Currently, the categories include: Child Welfare, Election/Voting Rights, Immigration, Jail Conditions, Juvenile Institution, Mental Health Facility, Mental Retardation Facility, Nursing Home Conditions, Police Non-Profiling, Police Profiling, Prison Conditions, Public Housing, School Desegregation.

"In 1997 the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC) at Smith College received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to process eight collections: the papers of Constance Baker Motley, Dorothy Kenyon, Mary Kaufman, Frances Fox Piven, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, and Gloria Steinem and the records of the Women's Action Alliance and the National Congress of Neighborhood Women. These six individuals and two organizations were chosen in large part because of their impressive achievements, as 'Agents of Social Change,' the name by which the project became known."

"The resource contains transcripts, audio recordings, and edited stories of a series of interviews conducted in the spring of 1998. Members of the Sophomore Class at South Kingstown High School interviewed Rhode Islanders about their recollections of the year 1968. Their stories, which include references to the Vietnam War, the struggle for Civil Rights, the Assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy as well as many more personal memories are a living history of one of the most tumultuous years in United States history."

Produced for PBS in the 1980s, Eyes on the Prize is a 14-part series on the American civil rights movement – spanning several decades and containing historical photos and film footage along with interviews and commentary. Eyes on the Prize II contains the last eight installments of the series and spans the years 1965-1985. Eyes on the Prize II features the rise of the Black Panther Party and the development of affirmative action. This part of the series was first broadcast on PBS in 1990.